


The Wolf, and its Tail

by Val Mora (valmora)



Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Other, giri and ninjo, miscarriages of justice, shapeshifting character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 16:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/902662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyr chases the wolf through five shapes and six fiefs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wolf, and its Tail

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peridium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peridium/gifts).



> Based on a Thor kink meme prompt:  
> http://norsekink.livejournal.com/6119.html?thread=9851623#t9851623
> 
> And also a little on Tam Lin.

Tyr chases the wolf through five shapes and six fiefs. He had lost the trail in Apalbrekka, after a giant bear with black fur and a wicked laugh had torn the trees from the ground and eaten all the fruit, because the wolf had turned into a fly and been lost to the wind. He had despaired - how to track a fly? - when he had heard reports in Lindenholt of a turtle eating grain stores. From there he chased the wolf to Hrafnskald, and onwards -

Until finally he loses it again, on the road, and takes a room at an inn. He asks for his dinner sent to his room, unfit for the company of others in his frustration, and the girl who brings the tray sets it down on the table in the corner with a noisy clatter.

"My lord," she says. "Lamb stew, and rye bread, if it pleases you."

"Thank you," he says, from his seat on the bed, and though he does not mean to - he doesn't, generally, sport with the women in inns; when he was growing up he spoke to too many serving girls who felt compelled to give the extra service - he looks at her twice. She is bony, raw wiry strength in her bare arms, but something about her is compelling: the cut of her collarbone as it rises from her skin, or the rawness of the joints of her wrist.

"Is it difficult, tracking the wolf?" she asks softly, her hand resting against the back of the chair.

"Yes," he says. "He is a trickster, like his father, and delights in taunting me."

"Oh." She looks away. "Have you ever seen him?"

"A handful of times."

"What is he like?"

"We have not spoken. Only fought."

She wipes her hands off on apron, dismissing the topic. "Well, we are glad to have you here, even if it means he's passed by."

"The pleasure is mine," Tyr says to her back.

The stew is very good.

+++

He realizes three towns later that she was the wolf. He had not known, previously, that the wolf _could_ wear an Æsir body, or would even want to.

+++

They fight again, this time in a river; the wolf was an otter, quick-swimming and lithe when he caught it. In his arms it transforms into a salmon, silver-scaled and slippery, the edges of its fins slicing his skin, and then into a crab, with quick pincers that tear at his flesh.

He tries to strike at the wolf, but his sword is too large, and his daggers are turned aside, and the lodestone cuffs are meant for a wolf's throat or paws, not - the claws of a crab, or the fins of a fish, or the wings of a fly.

Eventually, the wolf slips away, becoming a dragonfly, soaring upriver.

+++

He is pick-pocketed at a town festival by a boy with smiling eyes and too-sharp teeth, catches a butterfly and loses a badger. In a nameless inn in a roadside town the serving-woman is thick-fleshed and aged, and she opens the window - "to air out the room, my lord" before sitting on the edge and saying, "Hymirsson."

"Wolf."

The woman's body shakes its head. "I have a name."

"Fenrir," he says, lowly, and reaches for his knife.

"Truce."

He freezes. "So that you may attack me when I do not expect it?"

"Because I'm tired of fighting." She spreads her hands. "Let us talk."

"About what." He has nothing to say to the wolf, but will keep his word.

It is disconcerting to have a soft-fleshed old woman look at him with a warrior's evaluation. "I never did actually hear the charges against me." Her fingers twitch, as though flicking away water. "My father found me and said to run, that I was to be hunted. So I ran."

They thought, at the time, that the wolf did not have a man's intelligence, and thus was unfit to stand trial. But that is clearly wrong. It does not change the fact of Tyr's orders - after all, the Allfather would have known.

"He is being disciplined for aiding you," Tyr says.

The wolf's face blanches.

"You did not think of that." Tyr cannot believe that someone would be so ignorant of the laws of Asgard as to not know that. Loki would have known the consequences. Apparently the wolf did not.

"He should not be punished."

"He helped you evade the law."

The wolf breathes slowly, skin shifting slickly, bones altering. The wolf is a monkey, clambering down the wall.

+++

They fight again in Mikilsund, near the top of the clock tower; the wolf was a crow - to have become a raven would have been a killing offense, after his father was cast out of the royal house - and then a scorpion, but though it threatens its sting it does not strike.

It falls from the top of the tower and by the end is a bat, soaring into the night sky, snapping up a bug or two to eat on the way.

+++

At Langvik he wakes in the morning, in his camp not far from the road, to a small bird singing near his ear. He rolls over.

When he wakes, there is a boy making breakfast over a bright-hot fire, roasting a freshly-killed rabbit and cooking some oats.

"I hope you like your meat still a little bloody inside," he chimes when Tyr sits up. "It tastes strange when it's cooked all the way through."

Tyr doesn't have an answer to that. This is not the wolf's true form - he is called a wolf for a reason - but it might well be the truest of his guises, the shade of his skin dark and warm, and his face thin and sharp-boned.

"Also I ate all your dried apples," he adds. "They were tasty, thank you."

Tyr does not think to reach for his sword until after the wolf has left, his bowl scraped clean, but just enough left in the pot for Tyr.

+++

Three days later a girl in one town recognizes him, and as his quest is known throughout the realm, thanks him for his service.

"I am honored to serve Asgard," he says, and is surprised when she rises on her toes to kiss his cheek.

"We're honored to have you," she says, but for once she is not the wolf. He isn't sure how he knows.

+++

"Kissing village girls, now? You _have_ fallen," the wolf says by way of greeting.

He does not bother to answer. It is of course a taunt. The wolf is a girl, this time, in long skirts, thick black hair covered and held back with a kerchief, her mouth small.

"Let me tell you a story," she says. She will tell it anyway, he supposes, so he says nothing. Goes on with his cooking. He has already put the trout she brought as an offering, onto a spit to roast.

"Once upon a time there was a puppy," she says, tucking her skirt beneath her as she sits, "and a crab. And the crab lived in a little home on the beach, dug out of the sand, where she could wait for tiny fish to pass by at high tide and could catch them with her pincers, so she could eat.

"The puppy lived in a big home not far from the beach, with a big family and friends, and people who loved her, and more food than she could ever eat."

Tyr is sure he has heard this story before. Something about the crab agreeing to carry the puppy across a river, and throwing him off halfway across, perhaps.

"And one day the puppy went down to the beach, where while romping with her friends, she made noise above the crab's little house. So the crab peeked out, and saw the playing dogs, and became frightened, for they were ever so much bigger and there were ever so many of them, compared to her.

"So when the dog came close enough that she felt the walls of her little home shaking, she pinched the puppy, who turned and bit her clean in half, and then ate the rest.

"But the crab wasn't done, you see. Because the puppy had eaten her raw, there were bits and pieces of her that were hard to digest, and she made the puppy sick."

She nods, satisfied. Tyr cuts a slice off the trout and hands it to her. Her fingers are warm as they brush his. 

"If you come peacefully back to the capital, your punishment will be easier," he says. She puts the slice of fish in her mouth and chews, silent, not agreeing.

+++

Three meetings - only one of them a fight - later, Fenrir is a man, heavy-shouldered, and Tyr kisses him.

He was not sure he would do it until he did, and Fenrir jerks away, wide-eyed, says, "But - you -" Transforms into a many-tentacled thing and slips into the seawater, disappearing from Tyr's sight.

+++

He follows the trail up the coast, past fishing towns and river-mouths, three different bodies and six animals, and it ends at the wall outside Asgard, when Fenrir kisses him back and says, "You would not allow me to come to harm, would you?"

He kisses back. "I am too honorable," he says.

+++

He gives Fenrir his right hand, his sword hand, the hand that should have struck the wolf down, and thinks: _This is the price I pay for loyalty._


End file.
